In the cabinetry industry, a typical construction feature, for example, in cabinets which are provided with doors, is a face frame on which the door is supported and hinged. The face frame members are affixed, for example, to an opening in the cabinet, and a pair of concealed hinges are affixed to an edge of one of the face frame members and the door.
A customary mounting method of affixing the concealed hinge to the face frame member utilizes a hinge mounting plate which is positioned on an edge of the face frame member and fastened to the face frame member with one or more fasteners, such as fastening screws, inserted through one or more openings in the mounting plate and into, for example, one or more corresponding pre-drilled holes in the face frame member. Alternatively, the face frame may be omitted entirely, for example, in frameless cabinets, and the hinge plate may be affixed directly to an edge of a cabinet wall member in a substantially similar way.
After mounting one hinge arm to the face frame member or cabinet wall member as described above, the hinge arm is often pivotally connected to a hinge cup which is received in a recess in the rear face of the door member, in an appropriate position to allow functional hanging of the door relative to the face frame or cabinet wall member. Such "hinge cups" are known in the art, and are disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,604,956 to Grass. Such hinge cups provide a structure for pivotally connecting the hinge arm to a door member, as well as providing a recess for receiving a hinge arm when the installed door is in the closed position. Angled hinge arms may provide a certain increase in the angle of opening possible for doors using this type of hinge.
It is sometimes desirable that the angular range of opening of door be increased even further than that provided by angled hinge arms pivotally attached to conventional hinge cups. Applications which call for increased angular opening may include the installation of doors for corner cabinets, e.g. where such doors are hung as two parts hinged together.
Accordingly, it is one object of the present invention to provide a hinge cup having a structure allowing hinged doors to function with an increased angular range of opening.